Preventing disaster is that simple . I’ve had mine for 6 months and this is what worked.
Will it work in high dust environments like Alaska?
It’s different in the case of a keyboard. I have droppy hands and that Otter Box on a phone is no foolin’ essential gear for me (others, maybe not so much).
Pensketch: yeah, we mock that, but at least you can use that mouse when it’s not plugged in. Unlike, say, this one. (Caveat, yes, I know of one artist who did digital paintings with that mouse. Even a bad brush can be found useful if that’s what you got.)
My keyboard doesn’t look like I’ve wiped my ass with it - but it does look like I’ve wiped a cat’s ass with it - and we don’t even have a cat. Also - I punch the shit out of my keys - Shift, Command and E are cracked and gone (but I can still hammer the fuck out of whatever that rubbery crap is still left there and it works, so what the hell, eh?) and there’s a few more keys that look like they wish they could die. The whole thing is like a maliciously bashed lint trap in a dryer - with letters - most of them anyway. When the keyboard finally dies I’ll know it’s time to replace the whole damned thing. Silicone protectors aren’t gonna do jack for this beast - and I like using the breakage as a timing device for new purchases. Thanks anyway.
Ooo. Yeah, I forgot that mouse. We used those at the place I worked before where I am now. We had these aftermarket shells that clipped to them, giving them the mouse shape again.
And I never had issues with using wired mice or keyboards. In fact, the keyboard I’m using now (and the one on my home computer) are wired because I like having a numeric keypad, and the “Enter” key. And I’m not a fan of tiny keyboards.
They also had the advantage of not running out of power, or needing new batteries.
I have been using the same MacBook Pro for the past 9 years without a problem but my brand new windows laptop at work need rebooting at least once a day… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Apple purposely designed their mouse so that it was impossible to have it plugged in and charging while in use, enforcing form over function. Plus, people wouldve gotten so used to it, they’d start complaining that “the mouse become detached from the connector much too easily.”
this drives me crazy. you can plug the keyboard in while it is charging but…wait, what, you want to use the mouse, nope, sorry, flip that thing upside down and wait, fool.
I’m sure it was an absolutely insurmountable design problem, or they wouldn’t have done it that way. /s
(eta) I didn’t mention the other problem with this new MagicMouse design that I’ve noticed. The first one had a plate on the bottom that came off so you could change batteries, and it also opened up space around the lens so you could somewhat easily clear hair that got into the optics. Great for people that had hairy, shedding, pets like bastard cats that enjoy napping on your peripherals.
The new one doesn’t have that ability, and if hair gets in there it’s a pita to get out.
The insult-to-injury with these keyboards is how much of the laptop they are tightly coupled to.
Keyboards certainly shouldn’t die anywhere near this quickly or easily; but they are a part where a bit of wear and tear isn’t uncommon or unexpected.
Without some rather fiddly and very much unsupported spudging, replacing the keyboard means swapping out the entire upper case assembly. $700 part, nontrivial surgery.
On a normal laptop replacing a defective keyboard involves removing or loosening a couple of screws, disconnecting the old keyboard’s ribbon cables, connecting the new keyboard’s ribbon cables; and reversing whatever you did to the screws. $50-ish part, 10 minute screwdriver job.
Given the very parsimonious application of strain relief to Apple’s lightning cables(something of an Apple tradition: strain relief is ugly and bulky, so they try to slim it down, then they have to recall a bunch of power adapters because of short circuit and overheating risk, then the next model has slightly improved strain relief which is ugly and bulky; and so on…) and the fact that the keyboard, which charges the same way, doesn’t enforce non-use during charging, I have to wonder if they determined that using the mouse as a wired peripheral had unacceptably high odds of chewing through the lightning cable(where the keyboard presumably didn’t, since normal use doesn’t involve sliding the keyboard all over the place).
That area of the cable is a common failure point in wired mice generally; and lightning cables certainly aren’t especially well suited to take the repeated flexing near one end that being used to operate the mouse as a wired one would involve.
I would just buy a wireless high DPI mouse, not made by Apple. I’m very fond of Logitech’s mice but other companies make excellent mice and they have decent 5yr warranties. I’ve had the cable crap out on 2 of Logitech’s gaming mice and both times i was able to get them replaced with brand new mice (and even had them update the model to a newer one) at no cost.
my apple mouse ate AA batteries for breakfast lunch and dinner.
I now use an ultra cheap wired gaming mouse with an RGB indicator that’s supposed to cycle through DPI settings. It’s a lot more reliable for moving the cursor. No gesture support.
